In the field of electronic commerce, businesses and individuals can purchase and sell products using various electronic media, such as the Internet. Businesses use electronic media to sell some products to individual purchasers and to other businesses. Electronic media are useful for providing product information about products for sale. For example, a potential purchaser can often obtain product information from an Internet website of a business selling the product.
However, some business-to-business markets are characterized by seller-businesses that may not advertise prices on the Internet or elsewhere. Such markets may operate with more traditional methods that may include the use of salespeople and/or requests for quotes (RFQs) from a buyer-business to one or more seller-businesses before a product price is revealed to a purchaser. Transactions in such markets can involve products that come with various options, are made-to-order, are processed primarily upon receipt of an order, or involve some degree of service with the product, etc. In such markets, seller-businesses that utilize salespeople may compensate a salesperson with a wage, salary, and/or commission.
Also, the buyer-business in such a market may desire to receive a number of quotes form a number of different seller-businesses. The buyer-business may then have to deal with one or more salespeople from the number of different seller-businesses. Furthermore, the buyer-business may have to create an RFQ for each seller-business from whom the buyer-business desires to receive a quote. In some instances, mistakes in processing an RFQ received from a buyer-business may occur by a seller-business when the RFQ is in a form unfamiliar to the seller-business, or when the RFQ contains uncertain terms, for example.
Some seller-businesses, or third parties, in such markets may maintain a website allowing buyer-businesses to make an RFQ online. However, such websites may not allow a buyer-business to price-shop the competition without having to create more than one RFQ for more than one seller-business and/or visit more than one website for more than one seller-business.